*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Honor The Women Of The Paris Commune

Click on the headline to link to a “Wikipedia” entry for the Paris Commune.

March Is Women’s History Month

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Spring 1984 issue of "Women and Revolution" that has some historical interest- for old "new leftists", perhaps. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during this Women's History Month.

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International Women's Day 1984
In Honor of the Women of the Paris Commune

This year on International Women's Day, March 8, we salute the revolutionary women of the 1871 Paris Commune, whose fierce dedication to fighting for the workers' Commune inspired Marx to propose creating women's sections of the First International. At the 19September 1871 session of the First International Conference a motion, made by Marx, was passed stating: "The Conference recommends the formation of female branches among the working class. It is, however, understood that this resolution does not at all interfere with the existence or formation of branches composed of both sexes" (The General Council of the First International 1870-1871, Minutes).

e Paris Commune was the first modern workers revolution in history, because in Paris for the first time in the world the proletariat not only demonstrated its unquenchable determination to "storm the heavens" and wipe out its exploitation, but proved that it was capable of seizing power, creating new organs of power and ruling society in its own interests. Though they were ultimately crushed after holding out heroically for ten weeks against the counterrevolution¬ary forces of all Europe, the Paris Communards have inspired generations of revolutionaries. And it was the proletarian women of Paris who were among the most fiery and determined fighters for the new world they were creating, as the following excerpts from contemporary reports demonstrate (taken from a collection of documents titled The Communards of Paris, 1871, edited by Stewart Edwards):

Meeting of a women's club: About two hundred women and girls were present; most of the latter were smoking cigarettes, and the reader will guess to what social class they belonged. The Chairwoman, whose name we could not find out, was about twenty-five and still quite pretty; she wore a wide red belt to which two pistols were attached. The other women on the committee also sported the inevitable red belt but with only one pistol....

The following point was on the agenda: "How is society to be reformed?"... Next came a mattress-maker of the Rue Saint-Lazare who undertook to demonstrate that God did not exist and that the education of children should be reformed.

"What silly women we are to send our children to catechism classes! Why bother, since religion is a comedy staged by man and God does not exist? If he did he would not let me talk like this. Either that or he's a coward!"...

Her place was taken by a little old woman....

"My dear childre," she said in a wavering voice, "all this is so much hot air. What we need today is action. You have men—well then, make them follow the right track, get them to do their duty. What we must do is put our backs into it. We must strike mercilessly at those who are undermining the Commune. All men must be made to co-operate or be shot. Make a start and you will see!"

—Report of a meeting in the women's club of the Trinite Church, 12 May 1871, abridged.

The Times [of London] describes a [Paris] women's club: We entered the building without knocking, and found ourselves in a filthy room reeking with evil odours and crowded with women and children of every age. Most of them appeared to belong to the lowest order of society, and wore loose untidy jackets, with white frilled caps upon their heads.... None took much notice of us at first, being too much occupied with the oratory of a fine-looking young woman with streaming black hair and flashing eyes, who dilated upon the rights of women amid ejaculations, and shakings of the head, and approving pinches of snuff from the occupants of the benches near us. "Men are laches [cowardly bastards]," she cried; "they call themselves the masters of creation, and are a set of dolts. They complain of being made to fight, and are always grumbling over their woes—let them go and join the craven band at Versailles, and we will defend the city ourselves. We have petroleum, and we have hatchets and strong hearts, and are as capable of bearing fatigue as they. We will man the barricades, and show them that we will be no longer trodden down by them. Such as still wish to fight may do so side by side with us. Women of Paris, to the front!"... The next speaker seemed tolerably respectable, wearing a decent black gown and bonnet, but her discourse was as rambling and inconsistent as that of her predecessor at the tribune. "We are simple women," she began, "but not made of weaker stuff than our grandmothers of '93. Let us not cause their shades to blush for us, but be up and doing, as they would be were they living now. We have duties to perform. If necessary we will fight with the best of them and defend the barricades...." Encouraged by the applause which had followed her thus far, she now degenerated into rant, attacking the priesthood generally and the confessional, mimicking the actions used at mass amid the laughter and bravoes of the throng. One old lady became ecstatic, and continued digging me violently in the back with her elbow..,. "Ah, the priests!" murmured another from under the heavy frills of her cap, a lady of a serious turn of mind.... "Those priests! I have seen them too closely, la canaille [rabble]!"

—Report by the Paris correspondent of The Times of London of a women's meeting: The
Times, 6 May 1871, abridged.

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Those sharp jabs in the back that so discomfited the bourgeois gentlemen of The Times were but one small token of the throwing off of centuries of subjugation by the awakened women workers, who knew themselves to be for the first time actually making history. Of all the measures the Commune took in its ten weeks of existence—including getting rid of the hated police and standing army and keeping the citizenry in arms, opening education to all and forcing the State-enriched Church back into a purely private role, establishing that all the members of the Commune government would be paid only workingmen's wage; and be subject to recall at anytime, beginning plans foiworkers' cooperatives to run the factories—its most signal achievement was its own existence, the world's first working-class government; as Marx said, "the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labour" (The Civil War in France).

In summing up the fundamental lessons of the Paris Commune 20 years later, Frederick Engels emphasized the key question of the state: "From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognize that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine—

"The state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap.

"Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentle¬men, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (Introduction to The Civil War in France, 1891).

The embattled Parisian workers, men and women alike, threw their whole hearts into the work of creating the new workers' society—many have commented on the exhilarating, almost festive, air the Commune had as it prepared for its battle to the death with reaction. Against the old world at Versailles of "antiquated shams and accumulated lies," was counterposed, as Marx noted, "fighting, working, thinking Paris, electrified by the enthusiasm of historical initiative, full of heroic reality." The Parisian paper Pere Duchene (originally the paper of the left Jacobins), in its slangy fashion
-here are some excerpts caught this indomitable spirit-from Edwards.

Pere Duchene editorial on girls' education dated "20 germinal, an 79" (19 April 1871): Yes, it's a true fact, Pere Duchene has become the father of a daughter and a healthy one at that, who will turn into a right strapping wench with ruddy cheeks and a twinkle in her eye!

He's as proud as a fucking peacock! And as he starts to write his rag today he calls on all good citizens to bring up their children properly, like Pere Duchene's daughter. It's not as if he's gone all toffee-nosed, but Pere Duchene is sure of one thing: the girl is going to get a bloody good education and God knows that's important!

If you only knew, citizens, how much the Revolution depends on women, then you'd really open your eyes to girls' education. And you wouldn't leave them like they've been up to now, in ignorance!

Fuck it! In a good Republic maybe we ought to be even more careful of girls' education than of boys'!...

Christ! The cops of Versailles who are busy bombard¬ing Paris and firing their bloody shells right the way up the Champs-Elysees—they must have had a hell of a bad upbringing! Their mothers can't have been Citizens, that's for sure!

As for Pere Duchene's daughter, she'll see to it her children are better brought up than that; when she's grown up Pere Duchene will have got lots of dough together selling his furnaces so he can let her have a bloody nice dowry and give her away to a good bugger, a worker and a patriot, before the citizens of the Commune!

Long live the Social Revolution!

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Yes, long live the Social Revolution! And we, when it comes, intend to be no less worthyof our revolutionary grandmothers and great-grandmothers than were the women of the Paris Commune. •

“All The News That’s Fit To Print"-And Then Some-The Film Adaptation of Ben Hecht And Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page” (1931)

“All The News That’s Fit To Print"-And Then Some-The Film Adaptation of Ben Hecht And Charles MacArthur’s “The Front Page” (1931)

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin

[As of December 1, 2017 under the new regime of Greg Green, formerly of the on-line American Film Gazette website, brought in to shake things up a bit after a vote of no confidence in the previous site administrator Allan Jackson was taken among all the writers at the request of some of the younger writers abetted by one key older writer, Sam Lowell, the habit of assigning writers to specific topics like film, books, political commentary, and culture is over. Also over is the designation of writers in this space, young or old, by job title like senior or associate. After a short-lived experiment designating everybody as “writer” seemingly in emulation of the French Revolution’s “citizen” or the Bolshevik Revolution’s “comrade” all posts will be “signed” with given names only. The Editorial Board]

The Front Page, starring Adophe Menjou, Pat O’Brian, produced by Howard Hughes, from the play by Ben Hecht and Charles Mac Arthur, 1931

[Greg Green, the new site administrator here who I knew by reputation over at the on-line American Film Gazette where he made that website a major source of current and old-time film reviews and related stories, has given the writers in this space, the old guard, Allan Jackson the previous administrator’s base of support, and the so-called Young Turks who called for a vote of no confidence in his leadership alike, the opportunity to express their sentiments about this recent rather quick change-over in management. I have been busy finishing up a major story about a young guy, a guy named Steve McQueen but who at the time went by the name Eric Holden for reasons known only to himself, and who many years ago looked like he would be a world-beater at stud poker, a game he had been a natural at. When he came up though against the wily reigning king of the hill he let his hubris (and his dick) get the best of him in  a big game in the Big Easy, in old time New Orleans, and sent him all the way back to cheap street, back to playing in gin mills in dink towns for milk money.

Thus I have not been on the inside of the controversy although I am ready to say a few words about the now, according to Zack James who should know, disappeared Allan whom I have known for many, many years going back to our first meeting days out West in the San Francisco Summer of Love, 1967 night. If we were in Cold War Russia Stalin 1950s time or even in our youthful radical ideologically pure 1960s time when we banished, maybe shunned is a better word I would be worried about Allan’s whereabouts but I am confident that he is just licking his wounds in some out of the way gin mill where they don’t ask questions and don’t take credit cards and has not been badly handled by the Young Turks as Fritz Taylor has insinuated on the basis of no facts.

Let’s get something straight first which may be, may have been confusing to casual readers, the Peter Paul Markin the now deposed site administrator is not the same Markin forever known as Scribe by his high school friends and by everybody else afterward when we all had monikers to reflect our desire to “reinvent” ourselves in those turbulent 1960s when we thought it safe to do so. The real Markin, let’s call him Scribe for reference is a guy I met out in San Francisco during the Summer of Love in 1967 when right after high school up in Maine I was kind of footloose and headed west to see what the whole thing was about. I went up to this psychedelically-painted bus parked in a small park on Russian Hill and asked this guy with long hair and longish unkempt beard for a “joint,” a marijuana cigarette. Without saying another word he passed me the biggest joint I had ever seen and then told me “don’t Bogart that joint” when you are done. We became, despite a few years age difference which probably didn’t matter as much then as now, fast and close friends, we had each other’s back in the working class lingo of the time.               

We both wound up travelling on the same Captain Crunch converted yellow school bus that I had seen on Russian Hill that day for the next two years until the Scribe got his draft notice and headed home, went into the Army, was a grunt in Vietnam, came back and was never the same. There is a lot more than that to what happened to him but if you check the archives here you will get plenty of stories about Scribe and how he fell down, how he couldn’t in the end relate to the “real” world, got so high on cocaine when that became the drug of choice amongst the brethren that he started dealing. Got big ideas about breaking out, making some serious easy street money but got nothing but two slugs to the head and an unmarked potter’s grave down in Sonora, Mexico.

Got missed every day since by me the last guy who saw him when we were living in Oakland together before he headed to Mexico and got missed by every guy he grew up with including a few writers here. Including Allan Jackson, whom I can now tell without revealing anything was, is the real name of the Peter Paul Markin who was the site administrator her for the past decade or more. He took that moniker to honor his, our fallen friend who whatever his short-comings and they were many taught us all a lot of stuff about living when he was in his prime.    

I see I have talked more about Scribe Markin than Allan and spent more space than it will take to do this review so I will leave off until some other time but know this whatever short-comings old Allan had, and they were many, even if he did in the end go crazy to go back to those 1960s which formed us older guys it was only because he, we got old, got old and that is all.  

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The Fourth Estate, you know the press, the free and unfettered press as they like to call themselves, has been on a bumpy ride of late. Has taken flak from goofs at the top of the pyramid like that guy Trump who may be trumped long before his tenure is over down to the man on the street who can’t understand why facts should matter in an argument and are more than willing to cry to the heavens about “fake news” to solve every doubt, to back up every prejudice in their sainted brethren souls (or is it soles). But if art either imitates or reflects life, and I think the latter is true then this muddle of a free press and its detractors has a long genesis. And gets a heavy workout in this 1930s original male cinematic version of the classic Hecht-MacArthur play The Front Page. (That by the way is the Ben Hecht of the dramatic poster art work in defense of the martyred Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti whom he fought desperately to save from the executioner’s chair in 1927).       

As Pete Markin always encouraged us to do when he was around taking a cue from his old his school friend and fellow contributor to this space Sam Lowell let’s see how this one played out as a good example of the tension between free press and license to lie. Hildy Johnson, played by Pat O’Brian, ace reporter for a big Chi town paper, fictional paper so names don’t matter but call it Everypaper if you like) was both fed up with the hours working the police blotter for little scraps of vicious news to circulate to a hungry audience that needed some entertainment after their own long factory shifts and in love with some twist who wants him to settle down and get a real job. Walter Burns, played rather strangely for a Midwest Everypaper editor by Frenchman Adophe Menjou, wants him to slave away at the new news story for him. That tension will run the gamut of the film as an expression of the “buddy” aspect of this film.

Here is the newspaper end. Everybody in Chi town is waiting eagerly for one smuck and loser, Earl Williams, to take the big step-off, to get a jolt in the state’s electric chair after having allegedly killing a Chi town copper. Of course the smuck didn’t do it and in any case the Governor has sent down a reprieve. That however doesn’t stop the presses. No, not at all because once loser Earl Williams escapes from that Chi town jail and every city official  has egg on his face from the mayor down to the warden is scrambling like hell to find the bastard and mess him up good. Of course every newspaper in town in the times in this country when every hamlet and village had a least one hard copy newspaper and big Chi-type towns had plenty to fit whatever readership niche they were aiming for from high-brow Tribune efforts to police gazettes. Nevertheless high- brow or low newspaper, newspaper editor and cub reporter dreams of an exclusive. Hildy Johnson, maybe reluctantly, remembered that bride-to-be waiting for him, and Walter Burns are no exceptions. Even better they have one escapee Earl Williams in their clutches and if they can figure a way to get him out of the police blotter detail room and to a place where they can put even more egg on every city officials face so much the better. Watch this one to see in a funny way what was what in the days when newspapers, now under heavy assault from the Internet and social media, ruled the roost and gave out the news, fake or not.

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Quantum Of Solace”(2008)-A Film Review

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Quantum Of Solace”(2008)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Seth Garth

Quantum of Solace, starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, based on a character created by mad monk Ian Fleming, 2008

It probably does no good to moan and groan but here goes anyway since it is on my dime and moreover there is no need for a long summary of this 2008 007 film Quantum of Solace because the overall pattern was established long ago in the very first cinematic run through with ruggedly handsome Sean Connery’s initially offering in Doctor No with non-stop individual heroic action, a fistful of eye candy and every imaginable high tech and low way to off the bad guys-for a while. In a recent review of another Daniel Craig as Bond, James Bond vehicle Spectre from 2015 I casually mentioned that this film criticism profession was worse that the academy in terms of back-biting and one-ups-man-ship. That elicited a firestorm of criticism not from the academy who as least had the sense to duck their heads when the truth is thrown at them. Either that or they are collectively too busy looking for the main chance to one up in their own fellow competitors to not bother about a marginally intellectual pursuit.

No, I have now taken a second ration of grief from my fellow film critics Phil Larkin and young Will Bradley who have taken umbrage that I have sullied the reputation of the profession by publically lambasting their petty little squabble over who is the better personification of James Bond Sean Connery Phil’s contender and Pierce Brosnan Will’s entry. Compared to this the little academic disputes over, for example, who Shakespeare who writing those flowery sonnets for back in the day which has caused so much ink and blood to be spilled in academic circles seems world-historic by comparison.  

For those who did not get a chance to see my little review I was taking Will and Phil to task for making a mountain out of a molehill when I casually had mentioned in a previous review of earlier 007 Timmy Dalton’s The Living Daylights that while I would like Pontius Pilot wash my hands in the dispute, would abstain from any partisanship that Sean and Pierce did seem the only real contenders. That was all either party needed to believe against all reason that I was a partisan of one or the other when I characterized Sean as ruggedly handsome and Pierce as a pretty boy. They went on and on for pages running the rack on my “real position” worthy of any even half-baked academic. All they needed to do was to set up a conference complete with panels and learned papers and they would truly emulate the academics.

That was not the worst of it though. In that Spectre review I made the fatal mistake, although I didn’t know it at the time, of mentioning that I would not say anything about Daniel Craig’s take on the 007 character for fear of setting off another firestorm. Silly me. That only inflamed each party more in their respective championships. Phil took the “no notice” to mean that Craig had the rugged no non-sense “take no prisoners” dash that Sean brought to the character. Will, in his turn, touted my non-characterization as proof positive that the guile and charm that Pierce brought to the role was bestowed on Craig. At this point I will just say what I have to say and be done with since any way I look at it both men are looking at me merely as a foil for whatever each holy goof is after. To tarnish my reputation by indirection and inference. Just like the guys and gals in the academy do with their brethren.         

As I mentioned we can run through the storyline without much ado. As usual in the post-Soviet demise world where it is hard to give a name to a symbol of hard-boiled badness once the international red menace stopped being a bogeyman what Craig’s 007 is up against is an unnamed international cartel that has it fingers in everything, in every important spy organization including MI6. To find out what is what M, the MI6 chief, dispatches Jimmy to see what he can do to uncover the myriad destructive deals these bad boys are up to. Since control of the world’s basic resources oil, water, rare metals and minerals is always up for grabs that is where the threads lead him. This time it is about a criminal enterprise front organization posing as an environment saving entity run by bad guy Dominic Green which is buying up land rights and by extension whatever is found there from lots of places. This one revolves around a deal to overthrow the Bolivian government and replace it with a handpicked bastard General as dictator. In return they get a vast swath of desert and control of water rights. Nice.    

Needless to say this is easy picking for James to roll up. Despite the combined efforts of the corrupt Bolivian national police and Green’s own security apparatus James wastes the whole operation-puts it down easily. (It continues to amaze that one man, one pretty faced, ruggedly handsome man is able to survive full fire fields of the opponent’s fury. These mercenaries aren’t like they used to be-seem to be something out of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight apparently.) James does have a little help downing that general since Camille, played by fetching Olga Kurylenko, a Bolivian intelligence agent not on the take, has a personal vendetta against him for the rape and murder of her mother and sister when she was a little girl. Overall easy pickings like I say although this one seems to have outdone itself with poor fragile Craig busting up everything in sight for more periods that usual in a Bond flick. Make of this what you will Phil and Will.           

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor The Paris Communards!

Click on the title to link to the Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels Internet Archive's copy of Marx's 1871 defense of the Paris Commune, "The Civil War In France".

This is a repost of a January 2009 entry also honoring the Paris Communards.

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

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Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts
contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Markin comment:

As Karl Marx noted in the above linked pamphlet, although premature, perhaps, and although they seemingly made every mistake in the revolutionary catechism the Paris Commune and the Communards that defended it represented that first necessary manifestation of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a state needed on that road to our goal – the future communist, classless society. All Honor To The Memory Of The Communards!

Out By That Old San Francisco Bay-Kay Francis And George Brent’s “Stranded” (1935)-A Film Review

Out By That Old San Francisco Bay-Kay Francis And George Brent’s “Stranded” (1935)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont     

Stranded, starring Kay Francis, George Brent, Barton MacLane

The Golden Gate Bridge will forever in my mind (my heart too maybe) be connected with San Francisco. Forever starting the first time I went to California with my companion then and still fellow writer here Josh Breslin and saw the majestic rust red bridge in the gleaning daylight (on one of those fogless days of which there are sometimes too few of out in the Bay Area). Josh and I had been leisurely travelling up the Pacific Coast Highway along the ocean until we hit the Seal Point section of San Francisco out by Ocean Beach. We parked the car and Josh said let’s take a walk along the paths at the Sutro Baths. As we turned the corner at one point there was the bridge some freighters passing under heading out to the Japan seas, warning fog horns blaring periodically and all the thoughts in my head associated with land’s end in America. Breathe-taking.  (Josh influenced by the jazz-infested “beat” generation guys in the 1950s when Frisco was one of the nodal points on that map would always say that he could hear the high white note from some sexy sax player in North Beach floating out to those Japan seas. I wonder how he would write the lead to his version of this film review.)         

The bridge actually plays an important part as a backdrop in the film under review Stranded (or if you take the point of view of the main male character for much of the film the centerpiece). Or rather the construction of the bridge back in the Great Depression 1930s (making an important short-cut across the bay which previously you had to traverse either by ferry or go all around the bay to get north or south from what I understand). This was one of Warner Brothers’ social dramas which they were well known for in those days and although there is some woodenness to the dialogue and some “filler” in this short film it makes a few points worthy of mention in the plot.   

Mack, played by a younger 1930s heartthrob George Brent (pre-mustache which made him look a bit more dashing), is the construction boss on the big bridge project. No one can deny the social usefulness of that project. Lynn, played by Kay Francis, is basically a private charity social worker in the days before the government took its rightful place in providing services for those in need of help working for the Travelers Aid (an organization that previously mentioned “beat” generation took advantage of in their travels as did Josh and his friends in the 1960s when they were all crazy to get to San Francisco in the Summer of Love days).

They “met” when Mack was looking for a stray worker who had left town (although they had actually met in Pasadena some years before when she was 15 and too young for him). They hit it off fine and things were looking like wedding bells in the not distance future. Along the way though they hit a snag, a very modern snag if you think about it. Mack is one of those old-fashioned take charge guys who thinks he should be the sole bread-winner and let the little woman stay at home and vegetate. Lynn is a thoroughly modern Millie who sees her career, unlike Mack who see the whole social work thing as servicing losers, as socially important and part of her persona. So the old two career conundrum which pulls them apart for a while. Needless say they, deeply in love but thwarted by Mack’s Neanderthal approach, will in the end sit by the moonlit bay together.

The other dramatic tension in the piece is provided by a conflict between Mack and a labor contractor, a shark, who wants hush money to keep the bridge project going on schedule or else he will pull the guys off the job. This was a union job (in the aftermath of the General Strike out there along the waterfront which made Frisco a labor-friendly town then) in a time when jobs were scarce as hen’s teeth and so there was definitely a conflict brewing. This shark, Sharkey played by well-known character actor Barton MacLane last seen here as a Frisco cop taking a drubbing from Sam Spade after accusing Sam of murder in The Maltese Falcon, stirs things up enough to have the men ready to walk out on Mack. Guess who is instrumental in saving the day. Yes, Lynn and therefore that moonlit bay finale.    

Slavery and American Capitalism (Quote of the Week) Four hundred years ago, the first black African slaves were brought in chains to Virginia. In a 1953 speech excerpted below, veteran Trotskyist Richard S. Fraser explained the central role played by slavery and its legacy in the development and maintenance of American capitalism.

[American Left History publishes or re-publishes articles and notices of events that might be of interest to the liberal, left-liberal and radical public. That has been the policy generally since the publication due to financial constraints went solely on-line in the early 2000s as the Internet has allowed new and simply outlets for all kinds of material that were almost impossible to publish when it was solely hard copy going back to the early 1970s.

Over the past couple of months American Left History has received many comments about our policy of publishing materials and notices of events without comment. More than a few comments wondered aloud whether the publication agreed with all, or most of what has been published. Obviously given that we will republish material from sources like the ACLU, the movement for nuclear disarmament and established if small left-wing organizations formally outside the main party system in America unless we were mere by-standers to the political movements many of the positions are too contrary to agree with all of them.   

Policy: unless there is a signed statement of agreement by one of our writers, me or the Editorial Board assume that the article or notice is what we think might be of interest of the Left-wing public and does not constitute and endorsement. Greg Green, site manager]    

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Workers Vanguard No. 1149 22 February 2019 TROTSKY LENIN Slavery and American Capitalism (Quote of the Week) Four hundred years ago, the first black African slaves were brought in chains to Virginia. In a 1953 speech excerpted below, veteran Trotskyist Richard S. Fraser explained the central role played by slavery and its legacy in the development and maintenance of American capitalism. As fighters for black liberation through socialist revolution, we stand on Fraser’s pioneering work on the material roots of black oppression in the U.S. The racial division of society was born with capitalism and will die only with the death of this last system of exploitation. Before capitalism there was no race concept. There was no skin color exploitation, there was no race prejudice, there was no idea of superiority and inferiority based upon physical characteristics. It was the advent of Negro chattel slavery in the western hemisphere which first divided society into races. In a measure the whole supremacy of western capitalism is founded upon this modern chattel slavery. The primary accumulation of capital which was the foundation of the industrial revolution was accrued largely from the slave trade. The products of the slave system in the early colonies formed the backbone of European mercantilism and the raw materials for industrial capitalism. The three-cornered trade by pious New England merchants, consisting of rum, slaves and sugar cane, was the foundation of American commerce. Thus Negro slavery was the pivotal point upon which the foundations of the U.S. national economy were hinged. —Richard S. Fraser, “The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution” (November 1953), printed in “In Memoriam—Richard S. Fraser,” Prometheus Research Series No. 3 (1990)

The Girl With The Betty Davis Eyes-Well Bette Herself-Bette Davis And Franchot Tone’s “Dangerous” (1935)-A Film Review

The Girl With The Betty Davis Eyes-Well Bette Herself-Bette Davis And Franchot Tone’s “Dangerous” (1935)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Dangerous, starring Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, 1935  

  

Sam Lowell hates Bette Davis, Bette with the Bette Davis eyes as he was always fond of titling his film reviews when she was in play. Hates her despite his generally positive reviews of her films in her long career. Did a paean to her growing up in working class Lowell in Massachusetts as a companion piece about another Lowell native Jack Kerouac. Called her a channeling influence on Jean Bon out along the factory town on the Merrimack River. Sam’s gripe which I don’t particularly share is that after watching together (Sam and I are longtime companions) the film under review Dangerous he yelled out “What the hell she is playing the same theme as she in Jezebel and about twelve other movies.” Playing the untamed shrew, the bitch, the catty man grabber, the coquettish schoolgirl with a heart of stone, the vampish working class slut driving poor Leslie Howard crazy in Of Human Bondage and lots of stuff along that line. Even in films where she is playing a positive role like in All About Eve (in comparison to the gatecrasher Eve) and gullible Gabby in The Petrified Forest he says you are always waiting for her to pull the trigger and walk away without the slightest qualms. So says Sam. 

I think something else is going on though. Something that has nothing to do with Bette Davis as such but everything to do with his place in the dog eat dog film criticism world. Looking over his reviews here in the archives (and those from long ago when he was a free-lancer for American Film Gazette when he was younger and had just divorced his first wife and needed some serious alimony money) he certainly has changed his tune from calling her one of the great actresses of the American cinema. Called her role as Gabby plying her Petrified Forest naivete with her break out desires and Francois Villon poetic dreams electrifying.

What gives. Well what gives is something like one-ups-man-ship among “the boys.” The fraternity of film critics-who as Seth Garth pointed out in a recent review of one of the endless James Bond 007 flicks are worse than even the back-biters in the academy who have made a science of jockeying for position, of climbing up the food chain over the literary dead bodies, who knows maybe literal too, of their colleagues. So it is about staking “turf” in that milieu of not being seen as too obliging when taking swipes at the film being reviewed- or another reviewer’s take on that same film. Add in that Sam has “retired” from the day to day grind of reviewing films and has become the occasional contributor and probably feels he needs to make each contribution stick out against the rest of the fraternity.        

As far as I can tell the whole business started when David Stein from American Film Gazette lambasted Phil Larkin for fawning over one of the Marvel Comics cinematic productions like a twelve year old. (Don’t ask me which one but I think it was one where all the Marvel characters ganged up on the bad guys.) That stiffened Phil’s back when he started doing reviews of the James Bond 007 series and came out swinging in defense of original screen Bond Sean Connery as the ultimate expression of the role. Did that in reaction to Will Bradley’s partisanship of what Phil called Pierce Brosnan’s pretty boy take. Even got staid Seth Garth who likes to think he is taking the intellectual high road in his reviews down in the mud for being wishy-washy. They are still duking it out with no holds barred.

Along that same line, and maybe something that has also egged on all these boys, is Bruce Conan’s attempts to rip up the Sherlock Holmes legend. Bruce Conan not his real name but a pseudonym since he claims that his torrid exposes have made him and his family vulnerable to some international criminal cartel called either the Kit Kat Club or the Baker Street Irregulars I am never sure which is threatening him and his which is totally dedicated to keeping Holmes memory unsullied. I can see why he feels the need of an on-line moniker since not only has he raked Holmes (whose real name is Lanny Lamont according to Bruce) and his companion Doc Watson of being total amateurs and frauds but has done the very politically incorrect thing these days of “outing” the pair as closet homosexuals. That is the kind of stuff the boys are creating gathering storms over. Who knows where it will end but more than one reputation will fall under the bus.         

But enough of that since the average reader probably now knows infinitely more than they need to know about the inner workings of the catfight aura of the profession. As I mentioned I did not, do not share Sam’s estimation of Bette Davis, certainly not in the role here which won her an Oscar, of a high-strung faded falling down drunk actress Joyce Heath who is nothing but poison to anyone she touches (stage actress of course in the days they called that the legitimate theater to distinguish it from the muck coming out of Hollywood). The victim on screen this time is Don Bellows, played by Franchot Tone, an up and coming New York architect with plenty of promise and a certain amount of naivete or need for living dangerously on the edge-take your pick. Also very engaged to a scion of a Mayfair swell family.    

After picking Joyce up from a gin mill the action that will seemingly seal his fallen fate begins as he starts to fall for her after she has used every trick in her playbook to hook him. It is always touch and go about whether she loves him or just sees him as a plaything. Most of the time it seem she has outsmarted herself and really does love him. Especially as Don is the key agent for her return to Broadway and fame in a big time role. Things get tricky though when after throwing over that Mayfair swell dame he, square guy that he is, insists that they get married right away. Monkey wrench, big monkey wrench, our Joyce is already unhappily married to a still smitten holy goof (Sam’s term). Things come to an impasse when her hubby refuses to let her go and she thereafter crashes them into a tree in a suicide attempt. They both recover but the bloom is off the rose when Don finds out what is what. Here is where I don’t get Sam’s ire. Joyce seeing that she has been selfish and self-serving accepts her fate and lets Don go (in her head, he was already gone in his, gone to his old Mayfair swell dish) and goes on to her bright stage career and caring for her husband who was severely injured in that crash. What’s wrong with that.     

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part VII-“Bumbling Down The Primrose Lane”-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes And The Spider Woman” (1943)-A Film Review

I Accuse-Unmasking The Sherlock Holmes Legend, Part VII-“Bumbling Down The Primrose Lane”-Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce’s “Sherlock Holmes And The Spider Woman” (1943)-A Film Review

DVD Review 

By Bruce Conan

[Well I am still standing although it has been a close thing of late, a very close thing. But even if I don’t make it to the end, the end being finishing up the twelve, no fourteen, damn films that were made about the fraudulent so-called deductive reasoning amateur private detective Sherlock Holmes’ legend, then I will at least have gotten this very important review out to the previously fawning public. Despite endless harassment and threats to me and my family who I have now twice had to move for their own protection from a nefarious organization, a cult really, calling itself the Baker Street Irregulars I finally have the proof I need to debunk an important aspect of the legend. The film under review, The Spider Woman, will put paid to my important contention that Sherlock Holmes, aka as Basil Rathbone but whose real name is Lanny Lamont which is the name I will use for the rest of this review and his boon companion Doc, Doc Watson, were lovers, were to use a word from the time “light on their feet,” committed “the love that dare not speak its name” for then obvious reasons that it was a high crime in Merry Olde England. If you don’t believe me just ask famed playwright Oscar Wilde or more recently code-cracker Allan Turing. 

A lot of the charges which I have hurled at the Lamont legend (remember aka Sherlock) about his abilities as a private detective can be considered somewhat inconsequential. For example, Lanny’s inability to shoot and hit the side of a barn when pursuing dead ass criminals, his letting the bodies pile up due to his inane bone-headed adherent to deductive reasoning when even a rank kid P.I. knows for dead certain that murder, murder one, murder most foul has no such rhyme or reason and his inevitably letting others face danger and grab the miscreants. But for private detectives of his era the failure to pursue and bed the most hardened femme fatale due to his preference for men, for bumbling Doc Watson is fatal to his legend. Proves beyond a doubt that he is a fake and a fraud. I have used the examples of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade who went down on the pillows with one of the most gun-simple femmes around, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe to make my case. Enough said.       

I have been accused, mercilessly accused, of being anti-gay, homophobic, a Neanderthal, politically incorrect and a million other things in a smear campaign which I believe has been orchestrated by the denizens of the Kit Kat Club, a homosexual club that has been around since the days of King George III and my discovery that Lanny and Doc were member was one of the first pieces of hard evidence for my decisive claims. These men are also part and parcel of the more broad based Irregulars, a band of bandits and desperadoes who have been plaguing the citizenry of London with their criminal activities from robbery to dope, maybe murder if we ever find out the facts about a lot of bodies that have washed up from the Thames over the years are committed to claiming Lanny and Doc publically to the Homintern. These cultists have gone out of their way to malign me and my discoveries by those simple anti-gay charges. That despite my well-known, this space’s well-known early support for LBGTQ rights, support for same-sex marriage when that was nothing but a dream over a decade ago (although being on marriage number three I am not sure if that will work out any better than in my case but good luck), and a stellar defense of heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower and Trans advocate Chelsea Manning.   

If say one of today’s famous private detectives Lance Lawton came out of the closet and said he was gay or Tran or whatever I, and I hope everybody and their sister would agree we would yawn, could care less and good luck. But back in the day, back in the heroic age of the private detective a right of passage was to go mano a mano with some dangerous woman, better women, hit the sack (real or implied as was the case on the screen), and personally sent them over to the law a la Sam Spade or forget them and move on to the next dangerous woman. Simple, case closed]  

*****

Sherlock Holmes And The Spider Woman, starring Basil Rathbone (I have mentioned previously my doubts that this was his real name since unlike myself he had never been transparent enough to say that he had been using an alias. I have since uncovered information that I was generally right and found at first that his real name was Lytton Strachey a known felon who spent a few years in Dartmoor Prison on weapons and drug trafficking charges. It turns out that I was either in error or the victim of a cyber-attack since then it has come out that his real name was not Strachey but Lanny Lamont, who worked the wharfs and water-side dive taverns where the rough trade mentioned by Jean Genet in his classic rough trade expose Our Lady of the Flowers did hard-edged tricks), Nigel Bruce (a name which upon further investigation has been confirmed as a British National named “Doc” Watson who also did time at Dartmoor for not having a medical license and peddling dope to minors in the 1930s and 1940s where I had assumed he and Lanny had met up. Again a cyber-attack error they had met at the Whip and Chain tavern at dockside Thames while Lanny was doing his business on the sailor boys), 1943 

I first mentioned publically my suspicions about fraudulent Lanny’s preference (after much research especially that decisive membership in the Kit Kat Club) in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon where Lanny and this good-looking young woman were trapped together in a room after Lanny had been captured by a bad guy and the young woman had been kidnapped since she probably had the formula to the secret weapon of the title. Lanny made no play, didn’t even look at her the whole time they were captivity. Proof positive he was sailing under a false flag. This Spider Woman saga is the definitive proof.          

The story sets up that an unnaturally large number of prominent and wealthy men in London are committing suicide with no explanation for the spike. Lanny faking as usual his disdain for what is happening while on vacation up in Scotland fakes his death after having a tiff with Doc causing the good doctor in an unmanly manner to bubble over in tears and head back to London to settle Lanny’s estate. Suddenly Lanny comes back to life and all is forgiven by Doc who is glad as hell to see him. Lanny’s ruse was allegedly so he could smoke out the murderer of that pile of wealthy guys, a murderer who could only be a woman by Lanny’s lights (and just another example of his contempt for women). The hounding and pursuit of some woman to take the fall against all other possibilities drives the rest of the disgusting story.     

Naturally Lanny has to set a trap, a trap involving himself at first once he figured out that this woman, this good-looking femme gang leader is using a life policy scam to kill these guys who may have been wealthy at one time but whose gambling had led them down the primrose path (although you know in the end that he will fall down, will let the real coppers of the corruption-filled Scotland Yard, coppers these days who have bungled the investigation of the whole Baker Street Irregulars crime spree). Further investigation shows that the method used dastardly for sure was to use an immune pygmy to set a deadly spider on each victims’ premises. Nice right. Sherlock temporarily falls into the femme hands but escapes in terror and let’s Scotland Yard as expected close the operation down. I can’t let this one go without mentioning Sam or Phillip would have bedded her, would have headed toward the danger and then dropped her like a hot potato.      

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Spectre” (2015)-A Film Review

Yet Again On Bond, James Bond-Will The Real 007 Please Stand Up- Daniel Craig’s “Spectre” (2015)-A Film Review

By Seth Garth

Spectre, starring Daniel Craig, Lea Seydoux, Christoph Waltz, 2015    

Sometimes you just can’t win, just can make a simple statement without starting a civil war, a verbal civil war any way. Even in a seemingly placid profession like film criticism, hell, maybe this profession is worse than the academy when it comes to “turf wars.” The average reader is probably not aware of the cutthroat nature of the business, the dog eat dog aspect as each film critic tries to outdo the other either with superlatives or catcalls. It was better in the old days believe me when everybody just took whatever copy, press releases they called them, what a joke, the studios sent out and you just rewrote the thing with maybe a few asides. Jesus you didn’t even have to watch the damn things which from reading the press releases half the time you didn’t want to do anyway.

Then Pauline Kael, no, well her and her highbrow pieces and the notion in the film schools that film criticism, cinematic studies is the usual ploy, was the way to fill classrooms for those who were clueless about what to do in the industry but were hungry to learn something about film. You wouldn’t want any one of these kids to get within fifty miles of a camera much less a movie studio but a few witty comments wouldn’t hurt anything since nobody read that stuff anyway-film attendance was all word of mouth among neighbors. Then somehow people started taking them seriously since they were from the academy just like they started taking weathermen seriously once they had Doctor or something behind their name.    

Sorry for going off but I had to get that off my chest because frankly I didn’t really want to review this film, this can you believe it 24^th Jimmy Bond film starring Danny Craig in the 007 role in Spectre. This is where two bad situations occurred, converged, a couple of fellow film critics and a drummed up from fluff “controversy” over who is the real Bond, James Bond. Like my old friend and mentor Sam Lowell, who has probably written about a billion film reviews, said every time something came up from nowhere and hit him in the face-WTF. This one started out innocently enough when I reviewed Timmy Dalton’s The Living Daylights a film I did want to review and mentioned in passing the “controversy” between older film critic Phil Larkin and younger critic Will Bradley.

The controversy was over whether the original 007 ruggedly handsome Sean Connery or pretty boy Pierce Brosnan represented the real James. They have scourged each other in several reviews going back and forth like two wombats some of the stuff thrown pretty funny. My mistake? I happened in one doomed sentence to mention that while I took no sides in the “controversy” between them that those two contestants were the only real contenders.

That simple unembellished declarative sentence set off a fire-storm if you can believe that. Phil used that first part about Sean Connery being ruggedly handsome to mean that he had been entirely correct when championing Sean as the epitome of 1950s and 1960s manhood when eye candy was for loving and leaving after a little bout in the silky sheets (implied then not shown), when brute force was as likely to defeat the bad guys as some techno-gadget dreamed by Q’s crew and when craft and guile were at a premium. Will took the later part of the sentence about the “pretty boy” to mean that Pierce used his charm and good clean looks to do in the bad guys and that part of that was to take full advantage of the techno-world possibilities afforded by Q’s brain works to foil the bad guys. Worse of all both parties, seeking their respective real goals to tarnish my reputation and tout their own, taunted me for being wishy-washy when I took a hands-off approach to their silly dispute. Yeah, WTF. In any case I had to take this foolish assignment just to have a place where I could expose these holy goofs for what they are-holy goofs.                   

So to the film. I won’t even dream of trying to place Danny Craig in whatever position he deserves in the Bond-ian pantheon and just give a summary. Although except for the names of the bad guys and who plays the eye candy all of which could have been photocopied from a film review of the first cinematic Bond film Doctor No. (I will say that the role of eye candy had gotten better with time giving the young women a more professional role as here with Lea Seydoux as a psychiatrist and more decisive part in doing in the bad guys). This time Spectre is back in the total coverage intelligence racket with a front guy who is a high ranking member of MI6  called “C” by Bond looking for the main chance to use the new technology to gain power and profit. The go round this time involves the leader of Spectre Blofeld, played by Christoph Waltz who turned out to have been the kid whose father raised Bond after he had been orphaned. So a scorched earth quasi-sibling rivalry. 

Going through a million escapades Jimmy and that talented shrink fold the bad guys’ plans without much difficulty even though their fire-power was vastly greater than Jimmy’s. Nice cars, nice gal, nice finish where Jimmy walks away rather than waste the bad guy Blofeld although “C” got blasted to kingdom come when Jimmy decided to blow the joint up. Ho-hum this one is for the holy goofs in the film critic business to dissect.           

The Clarinet Is Not The Only Instrument That Goes Rooty-Toot-Toot-With Myna Loy And William Powell’s “The Song Of The Thin Man” Based On The Dashiell Hammett Characters In Mind

The Clarinet Is Not The Only Instrument That Goes Rooty-Toot-Toot-With Myna Loy And William Powell’s “The Song Of The Thin Man” Based On The Dashiell Hammett Characters In Mind

DVD Review

By Bruce Conan

The Song Of The Thin Man, starring Myrna Loy, William Powell, Keenan Wynn, based on the characters Nick and Nora Charles created by Dashiell Hammett in the crime novel The Thin Man,

The general reader is probably not familiar with the name of the reviewer, Bruce Conan, in this publication because unfortunately it is an alias as has been a previous one used by the same person, Danny Moriarty. The reason that I have had to use these pseudonyms is to protect myself and my family, mostly my family as it turns out, against the wrath and vengeance of a nefarious criminal enterprise based out of London but apparently with tentacles internationally called the Baker Street Irregulars. This nasty band of cutthroats, pimps, con men, whores, bandits, petty thieves and murderers was formed in the distant past to venerate one Lanny Lamont, real name Lanny Lamont after exhaustive investigation, aka Basil Rathbone, aka Sherlock Holmes and who knows how many other names. They are said to practice blood rituals, have serious drug addiction problems just like their so-called deductive reasoning guru Lanny, and to be responsible for half the robberies and unsolved murders in London town over the last few decades.   

One might wonder why a notorious gang of dangerous felons and there hangers-on and wannbes would be harassing and threatening murder and mayhem toward a placid film reviewer and his precious family across a big ocean in America. Fair question. And the fair answer is that I have been on a steady, unswerving recent campaign to unmask their idol, their homeboy Lanny as a fraud and a two bit amateur parlor pink fairy tale detective. (I refuse to call him their preferred name of Sherlock and that has even further inflamed them although they know as well as I do that is his real name and that he was brought up in the slums of West London despite all that fake highbrow pronunciation and blather talk he carried on with when he was alive.) Worse, worse in their collective books I “outed” him and his paramour Doc Watson as a pair of diddling agents of the Homintern, closet homosexuals in a day when detectives with that predilection were not allowed into the profession under penalty of expulsion (now they can be same-sex married for all anybody cares including me) and longtime devotees of the utterly corrupt and venal Kit Kat Club where all those with frankly weird sexual proclivities ply their wares.

With that burdensome background in mind I begged our current site manager Greg Green to let me do a review of the epitome of a real detective from that same cinematic time period who did not have Lanny’s nasty and counter-productive habits (really perverted habits but I am being kind). A guy who could figure two and two makes four while lapping up some high shelf booze and running his eyes suggestively up and down every stray dame he saw, and some not so stray. Of course that is our beloved Nick Charles and his lovely wife Nora along with that irrepressible mutt Asta in one of the series of films that William Powell and Myra Loy did together to light up the private detection firmament back in the day. Wrap up a case so it stays wrapped without help from incompetent coppers who would rather sit around with coffee and crullers. Not as Lanny always did hand the messy details over to the “on the take” boys at Scotland Yard.             

Take the Tommy Drake case as featured in the film under review The Song of the Thin Man. Nick was smooth as silk on that one, a be-bop daddy who took down the tooting town in the edge of the cool jazz age when the Duke and Count roamed the cities bopping the bop. Yeah, no question half the world, the male world, the gambling world had reason to do Tommy boy in no matter that he was the cat’s meow fronting for the band in the cream of big band era time. He was going to blow the gambling boat scene run by Phil Brant, you remember him the famous jazz aficionado who showcased a lot of new talent like Fran Page, Peggy Davis, Cindy Lowe and a host of other young torch-singers, the customers drank up his overpriced liquor and lost their shirts at the gaming tables when he had his latest gig for the big time provided by a big band jazz promoter, Mitchell Talbin. Yes, that Talbin who had all of New York café society crying jeepers-creeper for Charlie, Dizzy, the Monk and who saw in Tommy some of that glitter and gold-solid, man, solid.        

This is where it all falls apart for dear Tommy though. He is in hock up to his ears to a gambler for 12 K, big money then. Tommy puts the bite on that Talbin for an advance to pay off the debt and leave for greener pastures. No soap (no soap for a reason though not the one given by Talbin about chancy band acts and maybe it will snow in July). In any case Tommy winds up dead, very dead trying to jimmy the safe of his current boss Brant. Brant and his society bride married on the fly down in nowhere Atlantic show up at Nick and Nora’s the next morning looking for help.  Tommy death had Brant’s frame all over it. He is going down, going down for the big step off, the juice if the truth be known if Nick can’t save the day.

After a few drinks, couple of dances with Nora and a swift few look sat the belles on the side just to keep thinks interesting he cracks the case wide open one night when Brant’s gambling ship reopens for business. (In one of the great cinematic private eye moves ever recorded Nick by sleight of hand is able to get a key clue, a piece of music with exonerating information for Brant right over in front of the town coppers who also are happy with coffee and crullers just like their Scotland Yard brethren. Sherlock would still be sitting in that rundown rooming house apartment he and Doc shared sucking on the old opium pipe wondering what to do next. Brant and his lovely bride that high society dame, the guy who Tommy owed the gambling debt to and his wife decked out in diamonds and that Talmin and his wife all prance in for the turkey shoot.

You know Brant and his bride are off the hook since they went looking for Nick and Nora’s help. So it settles on the gambling guru and the jazz promoter. What if I tell you that dear sweet Tommy beside that gambling jones was sex-addled, was a skirt-chaser without limits on who he might get his claws into. Yeah Tommy would be too bright a boy to fool with a mobster’s wife, no percentage there. But a holy goof jazz aficionado no problem. So jealous jazz man Talmin bonked the now departed jazz band leader after his wife and Tommy’s lover covered Tommy’s gambling debt. In response after the jazz agent man confessed in open dance hall that he did the deed out of jealousy his dear wife plugged him rooty-toot-toot. Nice clean job for Nick and time for booze and bedtime. Touche Lanny.        

Coming of Age In A Fractured World-The Film Adaptation Of Katherine Patterson’s “The Great Gilly Hopkins” (2015)-A Film Review

Coming of Age In A Fractured World-The Film Adaptation Of Katherine Patterson’s “The Great Gilly Hopkins” (2015)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

The Great Gilly Hopkins, starring Kathy Bates, Sophia Nelisse, Glenn Close, 2015

I usually don’t do as my long-time companion and fellow writer in this space Sam Lowell is fond of doing of late and go chapter and verse on how or why he took or was given a particular assignment but this review of The Great Gilly Hopkins is a bit different. I wanted the review after viewing the film with Sam who was originally assigned to review it under current site manager Greg Green’s policy of having us “broaden our horizons.” Sam was more than glad to “trade” with me since broadening horizons or not he was not interested in yet another “coming of age” story-this time of a troubled young female as well although he did like the film on other grounds. But that “troubled young female” angle appealed to me. Appealed to me although I was not a foster child as the main character Gilly is but rather had a troubled youth growing up on a farm in upstate New York outside Albany and could relate to the way she struggled to gain some self-identity and self-worth against pretty big odds. In a movie, in this movie, those issues got pretty well resolved in Gilly’s favor unlike mine that never did get resolved short of leaving that farm environment and a few years of therapy, more than a few years actually.                     

Gilly Hopkins, played by Sophia Nelisse, has a well-placed, and to my mind a well thought through, chip on her shoulder for a coming of age thirteen year old girl. A girl who has been shunted to and fro through a series of foster homes having been abandoned by her birth mother whom she nevertheless believes will come for her one day. Or she will get to Frisco, her mother’s last known address, come hell or high water. Kids will think dreams like that and good luck to them. Back in the real world though Gilly is facing yet another foster home after having screwed up at the last one. This new one run by Trotter, played by Kathy Bates, looks to be about the same as all the others. A place to display her chip and the hell with the rest of it until she can blow the town.        

But this mad monk Trotter woman has her own ideas about taking in foster kids and seeing them through the tough spots and so there is a battle royal brewing between them over who will break whom. (Another battle at school where she is the brightest kid in the room but purposefully rebellious against the black teacher who tries to understand her is a sub-plot as well.) In the end, well not the end, but close the love that Trotter has for her charges outweighs those incredible hurts inside of Gilly.  

Before that can happen though Gilly screws up big time and writes a letter to the social agency claiming all kinds of mistreatment to get out from under Trotter’s influence. Just when things seemed to be breaking her way, she is adjusting to being cared about, she is snatched from the Trotter home by her wealthy unknown grandmother, Nonnie played by Glenn Close, a good woman but rather distant. That tension between going with Noonie or staying with Trotter is resolved in Nonnie’s favor when all parties realize that “in the best interest of the child” Gilly should be placed there for all the reasonable reasons except that love business. The mother? All those dreams of being together got blown up when she showed up through Nonnie’s efforts and it turned out she could have cared less for Gilly. Tough break. Still Gilly landed in a good spot and things look they might go her way a bit. I wish they had gone as well in my own case.